Weather Underground API Changes

Weather Underground as part of The Weather Company, an IBM business, now offers a series of Data Packages that tap into the breadth and depth of weather data to provide current and forecast conditions, seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasts, lifestyle indices, severe weather and historical weather data. With The Weather Company, you can take advantage of these packages quickly and easily, accessing weather data APIs via the Cloud. The packages are curated to give you only what you need in the format you need it. You can Incorporate weather data into your applications or combine business data with weather data such as alerts and notifications, forecast data, and weather imagery, then apply advanced analytics to build the foundation for informed enterprise decision-making. Learn more

To improve our services and enhance the relationship with our users, we will no longer provide free weather API keys as part of our program. If you have been directed to download our Weather Underground free API key by a third party provider, please contact your vendor for resolution.

Wow! Seriously? First, I will acknowledge that businesses need to make money, but it is the PWS owners like myself that are providing the data that generates income for Weather Underground. The right thing to do is to give a break to those of us that are PWS owners that are providing our data to your business free of charge!

Exactly - all PWS owners should be leaving WU and go to another service that is Open, or that provides an API at a reasonable price. @IBM/WS - good luck selling hyper-local weather when all of the PWSs leave and you have one site per city.

"To improve our services and enhance the relationship with our users, we will no longer provide free weather API keys as part of our program."? What kind of idiotic statement is that. I had to laugh as it felt like an insult to my intelligence. See ya WU. You won't miss me and I won't you. Am spreading the word where I can.

I switched over to them too! I think dev subscription is 750 calls/mo for two months (that's just for weather API... current conditions, alerts, etc.). You get a bit more calls for the maps. I ended up going with the $25/mo for 5,000 weather API calls and 2,500 map calls. Monthly fee may be a bit much, but I think well worth it over this no-longer-free WU API.... and their support actually cares and responds! What a concept!

Hi. I just bought a new PWS and was upset that WU isn't usable any more. I reconfigured my PWS to send the data to th IP of my local Raspberry. There runs a python simplehttp script wich takes the PWS data from the get request and writes it to a file.

Well add me to the list of people that once you shut me out of the API for my own station, Ill be pulling the station down. Completely insane that those who have born the expense of buying a station and providing you with the data for years for you to sell cant access their own information. Surely hope you will reconsider as I'm sure the exodus will kill the business.

It seems I can't sign this petition because I'm not a 'station member'.

I think the petition could be improved by changing the wording to include everyone and to spell out that station members were providing that data with the expectation that other non-commercial use would always be allowed.

I also think it could improved by better spelling out the demand: Free non-commercial api access.

Noticed I was no longer able to check the stats on my key. I might not bother repairing my PWS the next time an instrument fails. I did sign the petition. Will have to check what display devices are now failing at home.

Well, as a PWS "uploader" I am disgusted by this announcement. For those of us who use the API for purely amateur, personal enjoyment as opposed to commercial gain this in my opiion is down to pure greed and out of order. Like many have said, this site was built on the "generosity" of us all uploading our data, webcam views etc, all for free. If they cut disconnect my free API then I will follow suit and stop sending data. How long will it take before the general public who view the site for weather information realise it is not as good as it used to be as nobody is uploading data. That would surely sink the business. If its $850 / month for a basic API just so I can download a few radar images and a daily 10-day forecast then forget it.To make a stand I suggest that we all stop uploading our data for 7 days (start on 1st July) as a protest and see if that has any inflluence on the decision.I only found out about them withdrawing the free API as I came to look at my analytics which exceeded the daily limit and used up one of my raindrops. The cause - I ran a small script that says if the data you get from the forecast API is small in size because its crap, run it again until you get some decent data and it made 10 calls before it actually got a decent return.

I would agree that if you got enough people to stop sending data, it may get their attention. However, it would take a very large amount of PWS owners to do that. Also, new PWS owners will continue to sign up probably just as fast to cover the loss, not knowing the current status of WU's business practices, and treatment of it's providers.

I too would look at my stats after my 4 pm status email and noticed I could no longer log in starting yesterday. I have two DIY devices that used my key, no commercial usage at all. Will have to check to see if they are still functioning. I'm setting a reminder to consider turning off my feed July 1st.

I already upload to PWS and have taken a look at the aerisweather API packages. Seems they do a free Developer API which is good for 2 months. I have emailed them explaining the situation and asking if this is a rolling 2 months of s it 2 months and you're done. The Basic API costs $25 / month. Will let you know if i hear anything back

Looks like my two DIY applications are working. One has some intermediate errors but the framework is pretty old so it might be related but it seems to be showing the current temp and stuff. The other app looks fine as well. Last few queries came back fine.

All,I have been having some very good email conversations with the people over at Aeries Weather / PWS. Firstly I must stress I am in no way affiliated with them, I am just a disgruntled WU API user.

I explained the situation we are seeing here and basically asked if there was any free API service they could offer us in return for us sending data to PWS. They are already working on linking PWS accounts to Aeries Weather Here are a few interesting quotes from our correspondence.

"Regarding
a limited API for non-commercials parties, our team is working on a plan to
support those who share PWS data with us. Linkages of PWS/Aeris accounts will
allow us to gain a better understanding of who is sending us PWS data and the
quality of it. It would be similar to WU’s offering at 10-15 calls/minute with
500-750 max calls/day. We are still working on detail specifics (like if AMP
data will be included or not) and I’ll be sure to keep you up to date with
progression(s). "

(AMP data that they mentioned is mapping, so radar, satellite etc.) but this is available in the developer kit.

"In
the mean time, feel free to sign up for a developer account. This will last
2-months, but as of now, you’re allowed to renew this Developer subscription
for continued usage."

"I
spoke with the AerisWeather management team and we recognize and understand renewing every two months when individuals are
contributing data is annoying. We are fine with you sharing information
regarding AerisWeather working on a plan to remove the friction that exists
today. It will be a few months of planning and development though, so we can’t
promise an exact time just yet."

The
Aeris 2-month developer subscription is to be used for internal testing
and development purposes and provides 750 API calls per day with a max of 15 calls per minute.

I have already signed up and am working on changing my calls.They have said they will keep in touch and let me know how development is going so once I get any further information I will let it be known here .Andy

Very upset and disappointed. If IBM does not get it then in the long run they will be getting less data to sell. It costs them nearly nothing (really nothing) to give special keys to folks supplying data to get their own data.

In my case I Just want to get MY own data from WU to integrate in with homebridge/HomeKit on my pi. Was all set up and was working on the last step to get the key and well.....

I have an Ambient Weather device. It looks like I can pull my data from their server I’ll just need to figure out what I need to do to write my own NPM. The api is free just need a key from them. My data is already pushed there.

I had to contact the parent company (Weather.com) and then their parent company (IBM) to speak to any humans. It could have been a coincidence, but things started getting done after that. But, yeah, it seems like Tim Roche is the entire support staff, and I guess he doesn't do email...I imagine there is a direct line from the inbox of "support team" to the spam folder.

Shouldn't I, as a paid API user, have received an email with this announcement. It's been 3 months now and the only reason I know this change is being made is because of a random tweet I happened to stumble across. People who pay to use the API probably need it for something important and they're going to need time to make adjustments to account for it going away. I wonder how many people who pay for the API and rely on it for something mission critical have no idea it will just shut off one day without ever having had any warning.

Overall Weather Underground should also think about a business model for
end-users. Anumber of communities exist, which have used the API
to offer free open source plugins for open-source software to display
local weather data. Personally I am aware of two programs I use, Kodi
and Squeezebox server, however I am sure there are a lot more out there.From
a business perspective, the plugin developers will not be able to pay
subscription for similar services, this is all open source and they do
not earn money with this software / plugin. However there are thousands
of users of this plugins who might be willing to pay a small fee per
user to obtain a personal "user" API key. this might be as modest as
5-10 dollars per user per year however the numbers will add up... Too
high fees will make the the community to switch to other services
(global or local), however a modest price will be attractive to a
sufficient number of users. These end-user api licenses could be
restricted to reflect the needs of enduser and to account for a low load
on servers, e.g. 6 calls per hour...Overall I think this could be a
win-win situation - Weather underground getting new sources of income
while user of such open-source software can continue to use this
service...I hope the business department pick this up...Happy to connect for example to the Squeezebox community if required.Best,

Thanks James for your thoughts.Sad to hear your experienc, which is an eye-opener to me. However it reminds me of many big companies not being able to cope with changes and new business opportunities. I am part of another business (pharma/ medical devices / life sciences) and we currently undergo a complete change - focus on the end-user and his needs. In the case of Weather Underground they should think of adding additional business before loosing their big customers. From end-user perspectives, looking at Weather Underground, they provided quite good forecasts in Europe - thus I am sure a number of customers would appreciate this and would be willing to pay a reasonable amount of money in the context of being an end-user and not a reseller of the data (i.e. commercial service provider, thus a moderate fee). Providing no opportunity to these customers will just put pressure on them to find other solutions, i.e. plugins for other weather services. This may rang from APIs to completely dubious solutions such as scraping websites of different weather solutions. In my opinion - being open to customers with reasonable payable solutions will be supporting the own business instead of making customers run away...Well, if WU is too arrogant to listen to customers speeking up by themselves (even not investing in paid market research), then this is also a clear sign of wrong direction of the business....Thanks James for your thoughts....Frank

Like you, statements like "personal weather station owners will have uninterrupted access to their data" irritate me. It's their data already! They are providing it to you, not the other way round! Is this statement meant to be along the lines of "personal weather station owners will have uninterrupted access to forecasts based on data from all personal weather station owners"?

Regardless, I think this has all been handled really badly and I suspect that all of this PWS data will drain away rapidly... I suspect that most PWS owners were happily contributing to an "underground" site (it's even in the name) but will be less happy to contribute data to a big corporate like IBM. The whole acquisition was a disaster-in-waiting and it was the death knell of weather underground the moment it went ahead.

The API access has been increasingly flaky lately .. I wonder if it is being shut down via the death of 1000 cuts? Like everyone else who is contributing long term data from an expensive PWS, I am seriously unimpressed.

I collect the data into Domoticz (home mgt software) using the API key, and recently what I see is:

2018-11-07 04:42:11.242 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 04:52:11.623 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 08:42:21.697 Error: WUnderground: Invalid data received, or no data returned!
2018-11-07 11:42:34.431 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 11:52:34.802 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 12:02:35.427 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 12:12:35.896 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 12:22:36.265 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 12:32:36.646 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 13:42:44.642 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 13:52:45.022 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 14:12:45.927 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 14:22:46.263 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 15:12:48.653 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 15:32:49.536 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 15:42:50.168 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 15:52:50.512 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 16:12:51.579 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 17:22:54.452 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 18:13:01.635 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 18:23:02.003 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 21:03:13.950 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 21:13:14.297 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 21:23:14.626 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-07 23:53:21.438 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 00:03:21.960 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 00:13:22.340 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 00:23:22.709 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 00:33:23.238 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 02:23:28.238 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 02:43:29.060 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 02:53:29.427 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 03:03:29.814 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 03:13:30.196 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 03:23:30.563 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 04:23:33.588 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 04:33:33.961 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 04:43:34.327 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 05:23:36.150 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 05:33:36.605 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 05:43:36.962 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 05:53:37.320 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 06:03:37.678 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 06:13:38.039 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 07:33:41.743 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 07:43:42.183 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 07:53:42.561 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 11:23:51.811 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 11:33:52.180 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 11:53:53.029 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 12:03:53.387 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 14:13:58.920 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 14:33:59.675 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 14:44:00.064 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 15:24:02.149 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 15:34:02.542 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 15:44:02.921 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 16:04:03.870 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 18:34:10.289 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 18:54:11.022 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 19:24:12.667 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 19:44:13.445 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 19:54:18.822 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 20:04:19.345 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 20:14:19.878 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 20:24:20.234 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 20:44:21.196 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-08 22:14:25.768 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 00:24:31.747 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 05:24:44.626 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 05:34:45.080 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 05:44:45.449 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 05:54:45.815 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 06:04:46.187 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 06:14:46.567 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 06:24:47.193 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 06:34:47.572 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 06:44:47.941 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 06:54:48.304 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 07:54:51.282 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 09:24:55.349 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 09:34:55.727 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)
2018-11-09 09:44:56.084 Error: WUnderground: Receiving old data from WU! (No new data return for more than 30 minutes)

Whereas it used to work just fine, with maybe one or two failures a week.It COULD be Domoticz, but I suspect it is the API or overload on your system(s).

Dave, would you please provide real specifics -- like the PWS ID, PWS instrumentation, etc etc, so I can look into it, not just at a page of error messages? Or you can put it here if you want. Neither I nor you know what the issue is until someone looks into it, and with hundreds of thousands of PWS around the world, I can't just go through them one by one, looking for errors.

It's working fine right now, but if you look at the history you will see data missing at the times which correspond to the Domoticz error messages. Nothing changed my end, so I don't know why the uploads failed at those times.

Data is being uploaded by Cumulus, and nothing has changed for months .. however the last few weeks/days upload failures have been frequent occurrences. Like I said 'flaky' (synonym: unreliable).

Yes, I changed the interval from 15 to 10 minutes. I shall also turn on debug logging my end, if I can figure out how.

Not unless I figure out how to turn on logging. It isn't a device,a s such, it's a software program called 'Cumulus' which is reading the Davis Vantage Vue data, logging it, and sending updates to various websites. The WU site is the one which has, recently, started failing to receive it. As someone said, it is probably timing out because the receiving site is overloaded.